Worlds 2025: 'Together we can climb that mountain'
After a season filled with unexpected obstacles, Canada's Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are ready to duel with the planet's best pair teams in Boston
Here’s the thing about mountains. Getting to the top of them isn’t always something conquered in a straight, simple line, or a process that’s always the same. Sometimes, unexpected obstacles land in your way, and it’s how you handle them that defines the success of your quest.
Which is a rather roundabout way to enter into this discussion about the 2024-25 season that has been — at least to this point — for reigning World pairs champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps. The peak of this season’s mountain is now clearly in their sights, with the 2025 world figure skating championships set to begin Wednesday at TD Garden in Boston.
Let’s just say it hasn’t been the journey that the ageless Stellato-Dudek, who is still chugging along very nicely at 41 years old, and Deschamps, 33, had envisioned heading into this pre-Olympic season. Then again, the Canadian duo were coming off a dream campaign that was mostly golden, all the way to that magical March night in Montreal (the city they call home) when they seized the World crown in what was literally a story for the ages.
There have been frustrations about their inability to consistently produce clean programs — or, rather more specifically, being able to do two of them back-to-back at a given competition. Now, those are the kinds of things they can do something about, that are generally under their control. But things like injuries and illness … well, that’s a whole other story we’re talking about.
“Treacherous obstacles,” Stellato-Dudek called them.
“Last year, we had no illnesses, we had no injuries And this year, it’s been like sickness after injury, and sickness after injury that has just kind of been these obstacles that we weren’t expecting on the climb of this year’s mountain,” she said this week in a pre-Worlds conference call. “Before Four Continents, I was injured again. I couldn’t do any jumps or throws a week before leaving, so that was its own challenge gearing up to go there and keeping the courage and the confidence that I could still do it.”
Let’s rewind the clock for a moment to the days leading into the Grand Prix Final in France at the beginning of December. It’s a major mid-season signpost event that Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps dearly wanted to be a part of, but an illness that started with a fever and got progressively worse made it impossible (and dangerous in a way) for Deschamps to compete (they detailed it all in January on the day before competition began at the Canadian Championships in Laval, Quebec).
While that event didn’t exactly go to their liking, the Canadians saw a chance for much needed redemption at the Four Continents Championships a month or so later, which would also be their last competitive test before Worlds. But then it was Stellato-Dudek’s turn to live under the black cloud, this time the result of what she called “a silly fall” on a choreographic sequence in practice.
“I fell straight onto my glute and I had a gigantic hematoma and like, bone bruise, and that plane ride was not fun all the way to Korea. I had to lean left the whole time,” she explained. “I couldn’t do landings of a throw and the takeoff of the (triple) toe really hurt, so it was a lot of things like that I had to skip (in practice).”
So yeah, there was a little extra on their plates and minds in the days leading up to Four Continents. But tough cookie that she is, Stellato-Dudek wouldn’t let it affect her ability to perform in Seoul.
“Oh yeah, I hadn’t done jumps or throws for a week when I got there. My first official practice was like the first time I was doing those and the first triple toe … I've done so many triple toes in my life, so this might sound ridiculous, but I was terrified to do that first triple toe because I knew it was gonna hurt,” she said. “So it was just like, to what degree could I take the pain? And my first one was kind of a little sticky. And then I was like, OK, I can deal with that pain. And then I did a better one afterwards.”
And here’s the thing. Four Continents wasn’t exactly terrible for them, despite all of that. Yeah, the short program that landed them in fourth place was “very, very messy,” to use her words. But then the duo went out and produced their best long program of their season to date, a aquatic-themed routine that — as we’ve discussed here previously — has been an issue, shall we say.
It was precisely the skate they needed heading into Boston next week.
“For sure, that program has really helped us because the whole season, we had like a little bit of an issue going into our free program every time and that was really like a delivery for us,” said Deschamps. “So in that regard, it does help us a lot. We were able to transfer what we were doing in practice into competition and knowing that we’re capable of doing it now, it’s helping us to move forward for the next competition because now we can just do it and go there (and skate) free. We have learned that we have to skate without too much expectations on your own self.”
If there’s any vital lesson they took from Four Continents, the way Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps responded to their flawed short program in Seoul may well have been it. They’ve talked previously about dealing with the pressure of that World champions title sitting squarely on their backs this season, but maybe what happened in Korea might have unlocked something in that area. Something that could be eminently useful in Boston.
“Being in fourth after (the short program), it was like kind of like a worst case scenario. So it's almost like, well, we’re free to just do however we’re gonna do in the long program and have a little bit of more of a relaxed kind of mind frame because something bad already occurred in the short,” explained Stellato-Dudek. “And so we’ve been trying to utilize that type of like freeness and having that freedom in practice as well in the runthroughs because as we’ve been saying, practice all year has been going really well. It’s been the competitions that have been a little bit harder for us.
“So at some point it was it has to translate and maybe we just needed to relax a little bit like we were in the free program at Four Continents in order for that to occur.”
While that bounce-back free skate wasn’t enough to vault them to the top of the podium — Japan’s Rika Miura and Ryuichi Kihara won the gold by 6.40 points (though the difference was only 1.33 in the free) — it was enough to give Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps more belief that something extra good could happen for them in Boston.
Here’s what they do know: it’s going to be all about the way they skate at TD Garden (and yeah, that is kinda obvious). Not necessarily just in terms of placement, but rather how they feel about themselves and their skating headed into the most important off-season of their careers together.
“So for us, the positioning will end up as always just a bonus. In reality, what we really want for us is just to go out there and be proud of what we’re doing and then that will end up putting us where we need to be,” said Deschamps. “If we’re happy with what we’ve done, then we’ll be happy. And then if we want to do better next year in case we (don’t) win or whatever, then we’ll sit down, see what we need to do to get better, get more points and then we’ll reassess to do better.”
Added Stellato-Dudek: “If we’ve done two really good programs, that’s gonna feel like we won anyway. So then by that time, whatever the placement ends up being, we’ll work for next year to improve what we can. But really, it’s about getting off the ice and being content with yourself, which we have not been able to do in both programs yet all season.”
Now, all of that might seem like typical skater-speak in a way (they’d been asked if it was gold or bust in Boston). But as we’ve already detailed, this hasn’t exactly been your typical season for these two. But one thing it’s reinforced, perhaps more than anything, is that they get can get through all of the muck and emerge on the other side as still a formidable duo to be reckoned with.
“When we face harder times, that’s when we really lean into each other to go (through) those hurdles. And the one thing that’s true is either it brings you together more or it separates you. And in these circumstances, for us, it’s brings us together … (we have to) find solutions together, and analyze stuff and see where we can go.
“So we just think of working together. Go forward and bring all our team also around us. Like all our coaches and people who help us, so together we can climb that mountain. For sure, sometimes it’s harder, sometimes it’s easier, but it’s the hard times that make you able to go through the (tough) competition when you have the high pressure. That’s when it’s really helping, those hard times.”
They won’t be the favourites in Boston — the German duo of Minerva Fabienne-Hase and Nikita Volodin has been the best team all season, at least in terms of scores, with the Japanese right behind them — but put Stellato-Dudek’s best season scores together (75.89 for the short, 141.26 for the free, achieved at different competitions) and it shows this is a team very capable of contending for the podium again, at the minimum.
“I felt so much pressure last year at Worlds. This year, it’s not really gonna be that much different; it’s a back-to-back North American Worlds,” she said. “We have some experience in that way and know how to fight through that and how to deal with it. I think the situations are actually more similar than they are different, for me at least.”
Stellato-Dudek, in particular, got emotional when the duo was asked about what coach Josee Picard has meant to their careers. “Nobody has your back more than Josee,” she said, relating that Picard, who came out of retirement to coach the duo, had told them two years into their partnership, “I really believe you guys could be world champions, but I can’t believe it for you.”
But more than ever, in this year of greater adversity, she knows that Deschamps is the “good security guard” she needs on the ice. And it’s been a season of seemingly endless ailments for her.
“I jokingly always say I’m the least injured one at the rink and I’m the like the oldest by far. You know, because, it’s the teenagers who always have some kind of ache and pain. But this year I was like a teenager with all of my little injuries here and there,” said Stellato-Dudek. “I’ve had a shoulder issue. I’ve had an ankle issue. I’ve had a lot of little issues that are like more annoying, I would say, than anything else.
“They’ll creep up and give me a pain here and there for a sustained amount of time and then it’ll get better. I actually had my wrist taped at nationals because I had injured my wrist before that. So yeah, not fun to have to train through those. But like Max said, it does bring a sense of closeness and a sense of leaning on each other because he knows that I’m training through something that’s really painful. And he’s always there for me and here to help me get through it.”
But now the summit of their season is in their sights, the peak of that sometimes slippery mountain they’ve been climbing this season. And for Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps, it is now one of those rare times (at least this season) of good health for them both.
“Going into Worlds, we still have multiple days left (before it begins). Knock on wood, but things have been going good,” said Stellato-Dudek. “It’s been healthy, injury free, so that also has its own version of kind of giving us a little bit of confidence going in.”
Watching the Worlds
It’ll be a mix of (largely) streaming and television coverage, but CBC Sports will be Canadians’ eyes and ears on the World Championships in Boston. As we mentioned earlier, the action gets underway Wednesday at TD Garden, with the women’s short program the first event out of the gate. Here’s the coverage guide with start times as posted on CBC’s website, with the streaming available there and on CBC Gem.
Canada’s team in Boston
We’ll be aiming to get one more dispatch up before the action begins, but we’ll quickly spend a few minutes here to list the team Skate Canada is sending to Boston. It consists of three ice dance couples, three pairs teams, one man and one woman. One more time, here are the names to watch:
Men: Roman Sadovsky.
Women: Maddie Schizas.
Pairs: Deanna Stellato-Dudek/Maxime Deschamps; Lia Pereira/Trennt Michaud; Kelly Ann Laurin/Loucas Ethier.
Ice Dance: Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier; Marjorie Lajoie/Zachary Lagha; Alicia Fabbri/Paul Ayer.
Worth noting is this: Fabbri and Ayer are the only Worlds rookies headed to Boston. Everyone else was part of the Canadian team at 2024 Worlds in Montreal. So it’s a battle-tested crew, at the very least.